CURE2037 Cultural Policy Term Paper ProposalName: Chan Tim ChunStudent Id: s1155033294Topic: Sponsoring the Wealthy A Mixture of Market Populism and State Patronage as Hong Kongs Cultural Policy

Introduction:In Western theory, welfarism on culture, usually practiced by center-left government is opposed to privatization on culture, usually attributed to center-right government. It is bemoaned by some of the western leftists that there is no more subsidy on arts due to neo-liberalisms market-led logic. Although it is true that theres still a minimal degree of the combination of both, in the current Western context marketization is usually regarded as being predominant.

However, I would argue in this policy analysis paper that it is not the case in Hong Kongs cultural policy. Without parliamentary democracy, or what is criticized by socialists as formal bourgeois democracy, Hong Kong has its own characteristic cultural policy due to historical, economic and political reasons. I would trace the reasons that contribute to the formulation of Hong Kongs cultural policy and figure out its implication, mainly local but also global, to the cultural, political and economic rights of the public. In the end, I would like to suggest radical alternatives that can surmount the flawed binary logic of state-subsidy and market or the equally flawed binary logic of elitism and populism seen in many policy studies that are sympathetic of the Left with the insights gained from the case of Hong Kong which successfully fuses the two seemingly opposite poles.

Study Approach:In the first part of the study, the character of Hong Kongs cultural policy would be analyzed from two main perspectives: the institutional and the market ones. For the institutional perspective, Hong Kong was a colony of Britain and thus it allowed historically limited democratic participation. Culture was always treated by the colonial government as leisure which helps stabilize society especially after 67 Riots. Also, the colonial government took greater initiatives in cultural development since the 80s to counter communist influence to maintain Western worlds interests after the handover. After 1997, the Beijing government continued this bureaucratic tradition, partly due to historical factors and partly due to new political-economic factors, which include the need of forging a Chinese identity and the influence of state capitalism of the Beijing government. To further exemplify this, the specific management structure would be looked into. There is not a Culture Bureau in Hong Kong and therefore different bureaus and departments are responsible for different culture-related activities. But none of these have elected officials and it is often the case that the generalist bureaucrats are not experts in cultural matters. The directly-funded Hong Kong Arts Development Council is one of the few institutions that focus on the matter of culture. But it mainly sponsors the large artistic corporations. Here we see how the wealthy is sponsored: they are sponsored for further market success. Other examples would be provided from the cases of Film Development Fund, such as the film of McDull Kungfu Ding Ding Dong, which is another case of sponsoring the wealthy due to a mixture of the need of ideological control (i.e. the films pro-China message and forfeiting of the original Hong Kongness of MuDull series) and market consideration (i.e. the commercial success of McDull series)

Hence, as shown from the above, the market perspective is fused with the state-led perspective in the case of Hong Kong. But for the sake of analysis, the peculiar market features of Hong Kong would also be investigated. Hong Kong has long been dubbed as one of the Four Asia Tigers because of its success in capitalism which is guided by free market ideology. In 21st century, with the turn to symbolic economy in many global cities in which Hong Kong is one of them, Hong Kong also started to develop its creative industries including the aforementioned film development. In developing into what Florida called creative city, fashion, entertainment, sports and cultural consumption are largely advocated to attract transnational capital and transnational capitalist class. This can be embodied by the grand project of West Kowloon Cultural District or other mega events. But at the same time these cultural activities are also heavily sponsored by the government although they target the middle class or above. This can be explained by business sponsorship which bears some of the burden of government expenditure, but there are also context-specific reasons such as the heavy presence of tourism and trans-national capitalist class in Hong Kong which is part of the social antagonism innate in Hong Kong between local people and foreigners or between upper class and lower class. Besides, the state capitalism, or what commonly called collusion between businessmen and government officials, which is partly resulted from the state-led capitalism of China and partly resulted from the inner logic of capitalism itself, makes state subsidy and free market (which after all is an ideology which disguises the fact that monopoly is impossible in capitalism) indistinguishable. Moreover, the arts education and development started rather late here comparing to western countries and thus the arts market is not as well-developed. Similar to the previous stage of industrial development, the state plays an important role in it. Here we have another case of sponsoring the wealthy.

The cultural, political and economic implications to the public would be explored too. Needless to say, such a policy of the apparent paradox of sponsoring the wealthy diminishes the cultural, political and economic rights of the public. In Ackbar Abbas Hong Kong: Culture and Politics of Disappearance, he talked about clichs like East meets West and Pearl of the Orient tries to represent Hong Kong culture but ultimately fails to do so and actually make it disappear in the end. Hong Kong folk cultures such as busking are submerged in the end. For example, the clichs of East meets West (the image of Chinese junk in Victoria Harbor against a backdrop of tall modernistic buildings) implies the smooth combination of modern state administration and Chinese entrepreneurship and the dogma that Hong Kong people are by nature hard-working, that they will do anything for money. And the culture of Hong Kong is precisely depicted by these clichs, which aim at ideological control and economic profit. Thus, many independent creative authors or the grass root suffer from economic hardship and a deprivation of participatory rights in political decision making.

But this is not even the most important implication. It cannot be denied that Hong Kong has its specific context for such a culture policy, but my purpose is not just to historicize it, but to point out that this has its universal dimension. In many discussions of cultural policy, the focus is often unsatisfyingly led to the flawed binary logic of state-subsidy and market or the equally flawed binary logic of elitism and populism. But actually these seemingly opposite poles are interconnected as in the case of Hong Kong. There is no pure economic reason (the so-called invisible hand of free market). If it is so, political reasoning cannot intervene it. At the same time, there is no pure political reasoning as capitalist exploitation is the primary struggle. And of course there is no pure culture as it is always interconnected with politics and economics too. And a political populism (and even cultural populism) would become dangerous if it is not an economic populism(or more appropriately the abolishment of market economy). Wan Chin, the former Arts Development Council and Home Affairs Bureau official, proposed to use Hong Kong culture to build Hong Kong nation and portrayed it as an anti-establishment force. He greatly advocated that Hong Kong inherited traditional Chinese culture and Western high culture and that local folk culture is superior to the mainland folk culture. His exclusive populist agenda is often criticized as fascist and displacing the political and economic concern to pure culture. Also there is already lesson that in the West how cultural populism advocated by John Fiske is utilized as consumerist ideology. It seems that a more radical culture policy that can at the same time address political-economic concern is needed as a true alternative. This would be further developed in the final paper.

Academic Reference:Abbas,M.A. (1997).Hong Kong: Culture and the politics of disappearance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Lee,H.-K., & Lim,L. (2014).Cultural policies in East Asia: Dynamics between the state, arts and creative industries.McGuigan,J. (2004).Rethinking cultural policy. Maidenhead: Open University.Miller,T., & Yudice,G. (2002).Cultural policy. London: Sage Publications. (2000). - 20032005